It has been over seven months since the Electric Transportation Bill was approved by the Legislative Assembly in Costa Rica and six months since it went officially in effect , yet, car agencies in Costa Rica are still having problems getting the tax exemptions applied and the vehicles out of customs.

Back in February, Aduanas (customs) informed them they had to wait for the official regulations to be able to clear and release the cars with the new tax exemptions established in the Law, this despite the fact that at that time the General Direction of Treasury had already made clear the Law established that only the tax exemptions for electric car parts would require specific regulations and not the cars.

The regulation was finally published two months ago, on May 25, however, the problem now has to do with the Technology of Information for Customs Control (TICA for is Spanish Acronym), since apparently it requires modifications to be able to process the tax exemptions and include other characteristics of the electric cars.

Customs continues to tell car agencies that they are “working on it”, but in the meantime clients continue to wait for the car they already purchased, while others are losing interest in acquiring and electric vehicle.

Grupo Q (Hyundai), Grupo Danissa (Nissan) and BMW are waiting for 64 electric vehicles to be released by customs.

The purpose of the bill is to promote the use of electric vehicles by making them more affordable, and in this way reducing contamination and benefiting the environment.